• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Help with Instant Scenery Plaese!!!

Marvin Carter

Marvin Carter

Charter Member 2015
Hi guys I have a question about Instant scenery? When I place object in sim like on a angel they do not stay that way after loading and some move alittle on me.Some times there are double object next to each other. Is this something I"m doing wrong or is Instant scenery not liking inclines or piches.Also isn't SKD in acceleration, if it is I cant seem to find it???
Help please!!!
 
No, Instant Scenery does not like placing objects on an angle in FSX. They will revert to straight up and down.

Jim
 
If you expand the menu for Instant Scenery, there are settings for pitch and tilt, etc, so for an object to be positioned that way, it should remain so unless you change it. Putting in duplicate items is possible, but normally, if they are on top of one another or slightly off center from one another I wouldn't think that would be possible because IS won't allow the same object to occupy the same space twice, it gives you an error message if you try that normally.

As for the SDK, it resides outside of FSX, so if you don't have it showing as a separate folder then you need to get your Accel disk and install from there. FSX doesn't install it as part of the FSX program.
 
To add to what's been mentioned, one of the "value added benefits of FSX" is that FSX models cannot be manipulated other than height. If the models were made for FS9, then these can have a bank or angle (pitch) set and be maintained.

And the SDKs would need to be a multi-step process; install from Deluxe disk #1 (seperate folder on the DVD), then update with the FSXA disk. I don't know if you can go from the Deluxe RTM version to the FSXA version or if you need to go RTM, SP1A, FSXA version. I always go the three step process.
 
Guys Im' getting confused here, I have The reg. FSX with Acceleration, when I try to install SDK it tells me I need SP1a, but when I try to install it it says I need FSX deluxe disk 1, not sure if I have what is needed or going about it in the wrong way???
 
Let me see if I'm reading this right. I have placed canoes upsidedown and they appeared rightside up. I can rotate them to any heading and alititude but can't roll them upside down. Is this the problem? If so ....... That is the way it's supposed to work. I ran into this beta testing the program and the author would not repair it.
I think you can convert the bgl back to a xml and change it there but you WILL NOT be able to edit the bgl thats compiled again in IS.
 
Marvin Carter said:
Guys Im' getting confused here, I have The reg. FSX with Acceleration, when I try to install SDK it tells me I need SP1a, but when I try to install it it says I need FSX deluxe disk 1, not sure if I have what is needed or going about it in the wrong way???
Click to expand...

You have FSX Standard and Acceleration? If so, you aren't going to get the SDKs installed. You must have the Deluxe version of FSX, which contains the SDKs in a seperate folder on disk #1.
 
Marvin Carter said:
Guys Im' getting confused here, I have The reg. FSX with Acceleration, when I try to install SDK it tells me I need SP1a, but when I try to install it it says I need FSX deluxe disk 1, not sure if I have what is needed or going about it in the wrong way???
Click to expand...

Marvin its screwy how it gets loaded.

Go to your FSX Deluxe Disk 1 and load the SDK.

D:\SDK\setup.exe (run this exe)

Now go to your Acceleration disk

D:\SDK\SP1a\fsx_sdk_sp1a.exe (run this exe)

This second installer will remove the deluxe SDK and install SP1a

Now go back one folder

D:\SDK\sdk.msi

Run the .msi file and that will uninstall SP1a then install Acceleration SDK

Don't ask me why the last one just could not have been a stand alone installer but I am sure it is a good reason.
 
JoeW said:
Let me see if I'm reading this right. I have placed canoes upsidedown and they appeared rightside up. I can rotate them to any heading and alititude but can't roll them upside down. Is this the problem? If so ....... That is the way it's supposed to work. I ran into this beta testing the program and the author would not repair it.
I think you can convert the bgl back to a xml and change it there but you WILL NOT be able to edit the bgl thats compiled again in IS.
Click to expand...

Here is a quick test I just did. The zip contains Robert Kerr's runway distance markers, texture file and BGL placement file, which I also decompiled for review. Robert's markers were made for FS9, the other object I used for comparison is one of the filler objects for FSX, a chair, which is compiled for FSX. Robert's objects can be twisted and turned. You can tell IS to twist and turn a FSX object and the XML shows the proper coding, but FSX objects won't do the same thing as a FS9 object. One of those things that got missed as FSX was "sent" to market... :kilroy:

You can see the objects placed at KCDC airport.
 
Some FSX models can be manipulated for pitch and bank angle but they must have an animation.

Most FSX models (particularly in the default libraries) will not have this animation so they will not be able to be placed with pitch or bank information.

Now, a very interesting thing happened in SP2 for FSX (I think, that's when). FSX broke level of detail (LOD) for scenery models. The advantage is that if you have lots of copies of a non lodded object to place then FSX can do this faster as it can process them in a batch. The disadvantage is that if your model doesn't have an animation then LOD will not work. Anyone using GMAX for scenery objects will always have an animation as GMAX will add this to the model when you compile it whether you want it or not.

If you want a scenery model to have LOD that works (eg for a complex model that switches to a simpler model the further you get from it) then you need to animate the model even if it just a dummy animation where nothing moves. If I make a model that needs to be lodded and does not have any animated parts then I will assign a single frame of animation to the model and it compile with a .xanim file with no animation inside it.

Believe me I have found this out the hard way. The fences in my Boonah scenery are non lodded objects (I use multiple copies so I figure they will draw faster than if FSX had to check each one as it does with lodded objects) but because the terrain is not flat I had to make 7 copies of each fence segment: +3, +2, +1, 0 , -1, -2, -3 degrees pitched. I could have added a dummy animation and just used 1 model which I then pitched with instant scenery but then I would have lost the advantage of the batch processing. By comparison the cars are lodded (there are more polys in the cars) and I was able to use 1 or 2 degrees pitch in Instant scenery to get them sitting on the uneven ground more realistically.

If you have Boonah and Instant scenery you can test this be placing a couple of models from Ants_YBOA_Lib.bgl using Instant scenery. Place the models YBOA_CarCayman (dummy animation) and YBOA_Fence3post (no animation, not lodded) with extreme pitch and bank settings and then restart FSX. The car will still be at an odd angle while the fence will be level with the ground. Both models were compiled with the FSX xtomdl program.

The tricky thing with instant scenery is that it will allow you to place objects with pitch or bank and save these and all will appear well. LOD will also work when placing things in instant scenery. It's only when you reload FSX and the scenery that you can tell whether or not the objects will stay where you want them too.

It took me days to figure out why my lodded models were not working and my computer almost went out the window.

Here is a summary:

FSX Objects without an animation:
- Will not switch between LOD levels
- Will draw faster if there are multiple instances of the model
- Will not recognise the smallpartrejectradius tweak in FSX.cfg

FSX Objects with an animation:
- Will switch LOD levels
- Will recognise pitch and bank commands
- Will disappear when smaller than the smallpartrejectradius tweak.

It is nothing to do with instant scenery and is completely down to the way FSX handles animated (even if just a dummy animation) or non animated models.
 
I think I got it on the instant scenery, but will have to get the FSX deluxe sim for SDX. Thanks again guy you are great!!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top